Understanding the Mechanics of Effective Article Marketing and Article Syndication

Visit several marketing blogs or marketing forums, and you will find dozens of people proclaiming the death of article marketing as an effective marketing tool.

Before we start agreeing with them, consider this…

Some Food For Thought

It is human nature to lay the blame for failure on some external force, rather than to take responsibility for our own failures.

For example, I know several people who lost their fortunes in real estate, when the real estate market crashed in 2008.

If you ask them the reason they failed, they will say that fault was “the market.” If you ask them if you should get into real estate now, they will tell you, “absolutely not!”

Yet, I have other friends who are making a fortune in today’s real estate market.

What is the difference between the two groups?

Simple. The difference is belief and experience. The second group of people believes they can make money in today’s real estate market, and they have the experience to know how to be successful in the current real estate market.

So, I have got to ask… from which of these two groups would you want to receive advice about how to make money in real estate?

Dead, Dead, Dead…

If you listen to some folks, they will tell you: “Article marketing is dead, dead, dead. And, anyone telling you differently is wrong, wrong, wrong.”

They say: “Anyone telling you that article marketing works is a con, con, con.”

Again I ask you, do you want to take advice from the people who have failed, or do you want to collect your advice from those who understand how to be successful?

Belief and Experience…

I am one of those folks who believe there is still lots of money to be made with article marketing and article syndication.

I believe I can because I have more than a dozen years experience doing article marketing and making money from the process. And, for the last 10 years, I have been teaching others how they could duplicate what I have done.

Article Marketing Is Not About SEO

The truth is, if you believe article marketing is about SEO, then you are bound to make a number of critical mistakes.

1. You will mistakenly assume the quality of your content does not matter.

2. You will assume that all that is important is getting your article placed on a few dozen websites.

3. You will assume that success is measured in the number of links you gain through the process of article syndication and your ranking in Google.

The common belief since 2005 has been that your article is nothing more than the anchor needed to get a link on a third-party website — a link-building tool to help you influence your Google rankings.

The common misconception has been that the content of your article does not matter, so long as you are able to get a link to your website.

Those who were heavily invested in the idea of using articles to build links to influence Google’s search results were dealt a serious blow in the February 2011 Google Farmer Update. If you want to see how Google slapped the major article directories, you should read this article at SEOmoz.

This update was a major blow to thousands of webmasters, who believed the only role for the article was to create one more link to their website, and for those who believed that posting their articles in article directories was the road to the Google promised land.

Successful Article Marketers Tell a Story That People Want to Read

This article does not look like an SEO article, does it?

My reward for writing the article is still the link and call-to-action in my author’s resource box, but I did not write this article to improve my search rankings in Google.

Instead, I wrote this article to find a large audience of people, who might be interested in buying those things I sell.

If I had written a SEO article, no one would have wanted to read it.

But, because I am telling a story you wanted to read, you are reading my article right now.

Do you see how that works?

To be successful as an article marketer, you need to accomplish a few key goals:

1. Identify who is most likely to buy what you are selling;

2. Determine what you need to write, to be able to reach your target audience;

3. Tell a story people in your target audience want to read;

4. Provide enough value to your readers, for other publishers to want to share your content with their audiences;

5. Give enough value to your readers, so they will want to share your article with their friends and associates via social media;

6. Convince your readers by example that they will continue to receive real value from you if they click the link in our author’s resource box;

7. Provide an effective call-to-action in your author’s resource box to get more people to visit your websites and consider your offers.

Syndicating Your Articles

Some people want to believe article syndication is dead. They argue publishers want only original content — content that has never been published elsewhere, because Google penalizes duplicate content.

To help dispel this common myth, I found a PLR article titled, ‘How To Make Your Content Go Viral.’ Inside that article, I found a specific sentence that I did not believe would be used in another article. The search phrase used was “one video that went viral featured a science professor showing how to light a candle” within quotes. To see what I found, use this Let Me Google That For You shortcut.

As of this writing, that particular search query returns 87 results. Google is literally finding dozens of copies of the same article in 2013 and showing those results in a search query.

There are two types of online publishers. The first relies on Google to deliver its audience. The second type of publisher already has its own audience, and he or she is focused on giving his or her audience the kind of content that will keep readers happy and coming back for more awesome content.

When I create articles for syndication, I do not worry about showing my article to publishers who are waiting for Google to maybe deliver an audience some day. Instead, I focus on creating content for publishers who already have a large audience, now.

That means I must deliver awesome value to the reader within my articles so the publisher can deliver awesome value to its audience.

When I do this part well, I am always successful with article marketing.

Article Directories Are Simply a Means to an End

When I syndicate my articles, I have a strategy in place that I always follow.

2. After a couple weeks, I check Google and my server logs to discover who may have republished my article;

3. I contact publishers who have published my articles, and I ask them if it would be OK with them if I e-mailed them directly when I have new articles available;

4. If publishers agree to let me mail my articles to them, I ask them to tell me exactly what kinds of content they want to receive from me;

5. I record their e-mail address in a private database (you can substitute a Word document). I also make a note of what kind of content they want from me.

When my next article is ready for syndication, I submit it to article directories, article distribution mailing lists and the publishers who have requested for me to send them the type of content I have just created.

The only thing stopping you from doing exactly what I do is a little bit of extra effort on your part.

Article Marketing Is Dead Only to Those Who Are Clueless How to Use It

A dozen years after I began to use article marketing as a promotion tool for my websites, it still delivers the cheapest, most cost-effective, long-term and targeted traffic that I can bring to my websites. Some of my articles are still delivering traffic 10 years after I wrote them.

Is article marketing really dead? It depends entirely upon whose advice you heed…About the author: At you will find more training materials for article marketers. If you are more interested in marketing your books online, then you may find ProfessionalBookMarketing.com to be your perfect cup of tea. Bill Platt has been teaching other writers how to create content that gets the reader’s attention and how to promote themselves online, since early 2001.